The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – How to Be Abe Lincoln: Seven Steps to Leading a Legendary Life by Jonathan Shapiro

Episode Date: October 3, 2023

How to Be Abe Lincoln: Seven Steps to Leading a Legendary Life by Jonathan Shapiro https://amzn.to/3RDzNJ6 More than at any time in American history, except perhaps Abe Lincoln’s own, we need his help. And not just to inspire us. Over sixty-thousand books have been written about him, and most give us the heroic Lincoln. What we need now is a book that gives us the practical Lincoln. This is that book. It shows us how to survive our dangerously fractious age, one that is too often unmoored from truth, ignorant of facts, and unwilling to do the hard work of becoming better. It is written for those who don’t just admire Lincoln but want to emulate his rational, practical approach to law, love, leadership, and life. It identifies the seven steps that made Abe Lincoln legendary and teaches you how to follow them. Written in the accessible, humorous style of Shapiro’s previous books and television shows, the book is part history and biography, part philosophy, part memoir, part James Spader rant, and like Lincoln himself, a true original. Above all, it is great storytelling, using narrative to teach and inspire. About the author Jonathan Shapiro has spent the last 16 years writing and producing some of television's most iconic shows, including The Blacklist, The Practice, Life and Boston Legal. An Emmy, Peabody, and Humanitas Awards winner, he and David E. Kelley are the creators and executive producers of Trial, a legal thriller set to air on Amazon in 2016. In addition to his work in television, he is also the author of two recent books: the memoir "Liars, Lawyers, and the Art of Storytelling" (ABA Publishing) and the novel "Deadly Force" (Ankerwycke Press). For the last two years, he was Of Counsel for litigation at the Kirkland & Ellis law firm. Prior to writing for television, Jonathan spent a decade as a federal prosecutor and as an adjunct law professor at Loyola Law School and the University of Southern California's Gould School of Law. He is a member and the former chairman of the California Commission on Government Economy and Efficiency, as well as the founder and director of the Public Counsel Emergency for Torture Victims. He is a graduate of Harvard University, a Rhodes Scholar at Oriel College, Oxford University, and received his law degree from the University of California, Berkeley.

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we, I don't know, we smell good. We have an amazing author on the show. He's going to be talking about this gentleman you may have heard of. There's been a few books written of him and some history. I can think he did some important things somewhere in our life. We're going to be talking about his new book that

just comes out today.ica october or it comes out tomorrow october 3rd 2023 i was paying some bills for tomorrow so it's actually the second uh but october 3rd 2023 the newest book is by jonathan shapiro it's called how to Be Abe Lincoln, Seven Steps to Leading a Legendary Life. And we'll be talking about his amazing insights because he did some really cool things, that Abe Lincoln guy. And we're going to find out more about what went into his life and some of the insights and how you can be like him. Maybe you can buy that stovetop uh pipe or stovetop hat so you can wear it as well since 2000 jonathan shapiro has written and produced some of the television's most iconic legal dramas including hbo's the undoing amazon prime's goliath uh nbc peacocks the calling an emmy and humanitarian humanitas award winner uh his other

television and credits include peacocks mr mercedes based on stephen king novels nbc series the blacklist fox's justice nbc's life and the ab series boston legal the practice and big sky his first play his sisters-in Law, premiered in 2019. He's the author of three books, including the novel Deadly Force, 2015, and the memoir, Lawyers, Liars, and the Art of Storytelling, 2014. And he's currently an adjunct law professor at the UCLA Law of School. School of Law. I thought I'd have some fun with you and welcome the show jonathan how

are you i'm very well chris i i i thank you on behalf of a grateful nation 2000 interviews 15 years what what crime did you commit to get this that's a that's a good question i've been serving judges uh orders times for all this time and I guess I get the bracelet off here next year or something. That would be a great moment. There's that. Welcome to the show. GiveUsYour.com so people can find you on the interwebs. Best place

to find me is on the... We have our own podcast called How to Be Abe Lincoln on Apple, Tune, Spotify and you can reach me there is what you can do. There you go. And I must get a fan plug in the movie. The show Goliath was just,

that was so great. Oh, thank you. It was, it was so awesome. I, you know, I Billy Bob Thornton.

I mean, what a great actor. I mean, over his career, but it was just a great show. I was, I was stuck on it. I was just compelled and sucked into it from the get go.

Nice to hear. I appreciate it. That was a lot of fun. There you go. So your newest book, how to be Abe Lincoln, give us a 30,000 overview of the book, please, if you would. So we live in a time that's, that's almost, but not quite thankfully as divided as Lincoln's time. And rather than curse the darkness, I thought, well, I'll try and light a candle and curse the darkness. I'll do both and write a book that I think could actually give us what we are desperate for, which is not the heroic Lincoln, but the practical Lincoln. I think Abe Lincoln,

you're quite right, did so many wonderful things. The most important thing he did was sort of write the script for us to figure out how to get out of the situation we're in right now. And the book,

How to Be Abe Lincoln, gives you the seven steps that I think Lincoln took to be Abe Lincoln. There you go. He's not a superhero. He had no secret powers. There was no secret conspiracy.

The guy took seven very concrete steps that any human being could take and lead a legendary life. So that's what the book is about. There you go. He did quite a few things. So the seven steps, what motivated you to want to write the book? What drew you to the story? So I've been a lifelong, unpaid, unprofessional Lincoln scholar.

I have a master's degree in history on 18th century political history, so not Lincoln. But I just always thought and i'm sure we could have a debate about it that he's the greatest he's the goat he's he's the greatest of all time in terms of americans and uh so at a time when we're desperate for leadership and we're desperate to end the gridlock and we're desperate to have people who put country over self, I thought, well, Abe Lincoln's the best example of it. How did he do it? And there's over 60,000 books

that have been written about it. Just a few. Yeah, it takes a little bit of chutzpah, which is a Latin term, to write a book about something that there's already been 60,000 of them. So I had a very clear intention here and motive and plan, which was to write a Lincoln book that's never been written. I never found a how-to book. And so that's what it is. I love John Meacham's book on Lincoln

that came out this year. I talk about it in my book, Let There Be Light. I thought it was a great book. It's 723 pages. They don't fly by. There are a lot of footnotes. I would read it at night and fall asleep, and it would fall on me, and I thought I was being attacked. Wow. This book is a more useful, more entertaining, if I can be so bold, more practical approach to Lincoln. There you go. It's for everybody.

60,000 books have been written on Lincoln. That's astounding. You know, I was working on a book on Lincoln, The Best Way to Be Lincoln, and it was basically around the premise of don't go to the theater, eh? Too soon? Too soon?

A little soon. A little too soon. When I worked, I was a federal prosecutor for about 10 years. Oh, really? The Justice Department was right by Lincoln's last resting place in Ford's Theater. And I would on occasion pop in there. And I was always interested in the students who were very aware, young students who knew a lot about the assassination

and knew nothing about the man. And so partly this is a book to Help Rectify that problem There you go and we were talking before the show I pulled this up just now Recently on September 25th Of 2023 The tickets went up In auction sold at auction

For Ford's Theater the night Lincoln was assassinated For 262,500 bucks Wow Wow That was in the the night Lincoln was assassinated for 262,500 bucks. Yeah. Wow. That was in the, the tragedy there is of course, two things.

One, uh, Lincoln had already seen American cousin. So really, it's not like he had to go back. The other thing that's, that's tragic is general Ulysses S. Grant was supposed to attend the theater with the Lincolns.

Oh, really? He and his wife, Julia. Wow. Mary Todd Lincoln, who was prone to jealousy, didn't like Julia Grant. And so the Grants begged off and didn't go. Wow. The tragedy of that is, had Grant been there, he had an entire brigade protecting him. And Lincoln wouldn't have gotten close to the Lincolns. So my takeaway there is, jealousy doesn't pay.

There you go. There you go. Looking at the tickets. I have to tell you, Chris, that's not in the book. That's just some free advice I'm just offering. That's interesting, though. I love these little tidbits because you think, God, how would history have changed? What would the arc of history have been different?

And would we be in a different place today? And stuff like that. You just touched upon the most important, fascinating, agonizing alternative history question in American history. There you go. Had Lincoln lived, we know what his plans were for reconstruction and reconciliation. He issued them when he issued the Emancipation Proclamation. And, you know, in the book, I say that Lincoln was more than almost anything else uh motivated by love and a a christian reconciliation of forgiveness there you go how different the country would have been

yeah uh maybe no that's a that's a bad joke i'm not gonna go there i will do this one though um i'm looking at the tickets online and it looks like the seats were in the non-shooting section so that's that's there you do know i'm not the guest to talk about the lincoln board theater tickets i just i just i just had to pop that joke you know stop um so uh tell us about your origin story before he digs more in the book uh tell us about your life we kind of cruise through it in the in the bio but what got you Tell us about your life. We kind of cruised through it in the bio, but what got you down this road and what made you kind of over time become a real Lincoln love?

It's funny because I sort of tell the story in the book. I was sick one day from Calabash Elementary School in the beautiful LA Unified School District and I was home in bed and the TV was on and I was watching an old John Ford movie, Young Mr. Lincoln, starring Henry Fonda. And at some point as a kid, I had read the kid's book, Meet Abe Lincoln. So this was, that movie had such a profound impact on me. I think that's when I first started about thinking of law school.

And my oldest son is named Abraham for Abraham Lincoln. Really? It's been kind of a lifelong interest. And I think I try to talk about this in the book. The reason Lincoln is so appealing is he's so human. Great sense of humor. He was considered the greatest storyteller of his generation. People used to go to the White House

not to meet the president, but to hear his jokes. Really? He suffered from significant depressions to the point where his friends had to take the razor out of his house because they were afraid he was going to kill himself with it. Really? Wow.

He made mistakes. He was sometimes quiet when he should have spoken up and spoke up when he should have stayed quiet. He's one of us. Yeah. And the idea that this loving, conflict adverse man had to become the commander in chief in the most

brutal butchering in the history of the United States. And that he did it because his moral compass said he had to do it. You know, is beyond Shakespeare. It's the greatest American story and and

so i you asked me how'd you get interested in lincoln how could anybody not be interested in lincoln he's the best and the brightest this country ever produced that's true washington's been calling me he's upset that you said that uh uh lincoln was the goat. So I'll forward his emails to you. He's never gotten over that. Wouldn't he think? You know, you date Martha one time before they get married. I know.

I know. So, uh, in the book, uh, did you, what was one of the motivations in the book? Um,

you know, with Lincoln's time with what he was dealing with is we were on the cusp of being at each other's throats as brothers and sisters, as what we know as Americans. And we're kind of there today with what's going on with our politics. And, you know, it basically was a great attempt to, a great as in, not in like it was awesome, but like it was a grand, a great attempt to destroy this country and separate it into two different countries. Do you think that that was a bit of motivation for you too as well to try and see if we can? That was the main motivation to write that. There you go. I was always going to write a Lincoln book in my mind. The time finally came,

huh? Well, life is funny. Unfortunately, my, my father became very ill and passed in April. And so I was, sorry,

the last few months of his life, I was over at my old family house, uh, helping mom out. And, and, uh, so I found my old AP history notes.

Oh, really? And, but, uh, so I found my old AP history notes. Oh, really? And, but what, what really troubled me was I kept seeing old friends who worse than disagreeing with me politically. Didn't want to talk about politics. They were done with politics. They're sick of politics.

They hate both sides. They're just done. And that's bad news for a democracy. You can't have that. If all the citizens wash their hands of it, then you know who's in charge?

The people who have their own personal interests. So I thought, okay, now is the time to just do whatever I can to remind people, hey, you know, Abe Lincoln actually has everything to say about this moment. And every aspect of his life is a great example of how we can get back to being the country that I think we're supposed to be there you go and i mean he was so gracious about um the war and winning uh even the rules he made of prisoners being held and and at the end he didn't really want to punish uh the south he he was more like okay look we said a lot of differences let's all get back to

trying to be americans i think if i understand his history correctly. Tell us some of the seven steps or tease out to us some of the stories that are in the book. So I like what you said about graciousness, because that was almost going to be one of the steps, because it was such a hallmark of his character. So the idea is, what are the seven steps that Lincoln took to be Abe Lincoln? And there are seven, and I'm going to tell you right now, the first letter of each step spells out Lincoln. Does it really?

Yeah. And if you say, well, that's goofy, that's right. It's supposed to be goofy. And I'll tell you why. It's a book about Lincoln. And Lincoln liked to be goofy. And he was always goofy on purpose in order to advertise and brand himself and to make a point that would stick

so for example he would always ride into town on a horse that was too small on purpose he always wore the stovetop hat because it became iconic he carried a green umbrella with his name stitched into it and white so that people would remember his name he joked that he was the ugliest man in the world and once said that if he had two faces would he wear the one he had on he also made himself the subject of more photographs than any other american in history up to that point he created this vast body of IP that could be used by newspapers. So he was a guy who understood public image and understood how to craft it.

And so he would do something like the acrostic Lincoln. So the first step to be Lincoln, I think, and the most salient aspect of his character that all his contemporaries talk about is laughter. To able to laugh that guy was a henny youngman shecky green comic he never stopped telling jokes sounds like he missed his career man he should have done the tour you know the comedy that's funny you say that there were contemporaries who thought that he should have and could have been a professional humor writer. There you go. And there were others who hated his humor and thought he diminished the dignity of the office

who claimed he suffered from what we would now call Tourette's syndrome. I mean, he literally could not stop. Really? Wow. One of the things he said was that he needed humor to live. That if he didn't laugh, he'd say he'd cry. And then later in his administration, he said if it wasn't for laughter, he'd kill himself. Wow.

So to be Lincoln, you have to laugh. What does it mean to laugh? I think that laughter is a sign not only of great intelligence, but also great empathy. I've never really known. My wife wrote a wonderful book about stand-up comedy a number of years ago called Comic Lives. A number of my friends are comics. I've never met one of them who wasn't very very bright and also very very sensitive and very dark

and that was Lincoln right that was Lincoln would have loved the I think the jokes you were telling earlier and so in my in my book on the first step about laughter I say

that a sense of humor is like the other five senses. It's something we're all born with. People say I just don't have a sense of humor. Of course you have a sense of humor. You just don't have a very finely developed sense of humor. All of us can improve our hearing, can improve our listening, and can improve our sense of humor by studying what Lincoln did, to be funny, why he did it,

why it mattered so much to him, and how we can improve our own sense of humor. Because it's important. It matters. You can't be Lincoln without the empathy and intelligence that's needed to be able to laugh, especially at yourself.

You're right. I don't see a lot of self-deprecation on our political landscape right now. That's true. That's true. You know, comedy is multifaceted from the aspects you talked about with character, and it takes a lot to be able to laugh at yourself. And a lot of comedians suffer from depression. A lot of comedians I know, you know a lot of comedians i

know they suffer from depression traumas and and everything else and it's almost a way to medicate i mean i'm the same way when i hear people laugh it's like fucking crack it's that it's it's cracked to the brain where you're like oh they laugh i got i got more of that um you know it's a coping mechanism it's it's george carlin uh in my wife's book gave a great quote that I cite in the book. Carlin said that stand-up comedy is like jazz, America's greatest contribution and innovation in the arts. But Carlin said comedy is even better than jazz because literally the comic can in a split second change the entire tenor of the piece. Yeah. And Lincoln was a stand up.

And I compare Lincoln in that sense to other presidents. And I point out that, you know, Reagan had a very good sense of humor and honed his comedy and was often self-deprecating. I also point out in the book, Lincoln, at least until his early 30s, could be very cutting. He'd be a real insult comic, which is really contradictory to our image of him. And I talk about the event that changed him forever in terms of what he laughed about and how he would be funny and then i talk about you know whatever you feel about donald trump you're missing the point if you don't recognize how he has used laughter often at the expense of others to do much of of what Lincoln did with his humor.

In what way? Well, if I tell you that, you're not going to buy the book. Oh, that's right. We're teasing the book, folks. You're going to buy the book and read it. I'm supposed to just give the book away? Hold on. I'm trying to save myself some reading here, Jonathan.

But no. I was sure you were queuing me up for something, so I bit the queue up. No, I will. No, I wasn't sure if you were queuing me up for something. So I bit the queue up. No, I will. No, I was. Lincoln, you know, Trump compared himself to Lincoln, if you recall. And surprisingly, Trump found himself to be, you know, a worthy counterpart, if not the best president since Lincoln. So I compare Trump's use of i compare trump's use of humor

to lincoln's use of humor and i talk about how they were similar and how both men in a sense are the two presidents who used humor the most effectively really i don't think anyone except maybe reagan is close but you know I, I married a comedy writer. I married a woman who wrote a book about comedy. I would, I, I would, I,

my, my idea of hell is, is a day without laughing. That's true. Yeah. The same way, but Lincoln's laughter was always to build community. Lincoln's laughter was always to make himself empathetic and available. Lincoln's humor was always to build community. Lincoln's laughter was always to make himself empathetic

and available. Lincoln's humor was always to bring people into the tent. Trump's humor isn't and never has been and never will be. And it says more about the times we live in and our sensibilities than it does about either man.

There you go. Well, it certainly would have been a different country if Abe Lincoln had moved had uh you know moved to la and worked the comedy store and then go for president he i i think he would be um on medication i say that not facetiously we know that he did ask a doctor friend of his if the doctor had anything he could give him to help him through his depressions well he could have got some from robin williams if he went to the comedy store so there you go uh there's a lot of that going around or he could have worked snl you know opportunities you could run some of these things by the producer you don't have to say okay all right

so uh you want to tease out do you want to tease out all the, the. I'll go quicker. So the second step is improve. Abe Lincoln was an absolute monster when it came to wanting to self-improve. From the time he could speak, his stepmother, Sarah, said he wanted to learn how to do things and how to get better. And he read self-help books. We and he read self-help books we know he self-help books and he annotated them and gave them every time so i won't belabor the point except to say one of the reasons i wrote this book is i think we've lost the thread that used to be so important to the American character,

which is self-improvement. When I go to my bookstore, if I can find one, and I see all the self-help books, they're all about emotional health. The history of this country is about how can we improve our abilities to make a living? How can we improve the highways? How can we improve the civilization we're creating?

Abe Lincoln, uneducated, no formal schooling, is the only U.S. president to have obtained a patent. And he obtained a patent from the U.S. Patent Office for the most complicated and massive project to free ships on the Mississippi that had ground on the riverbank, right? Abe Lincoln accepted a job as a surveyor, realizing he knew nothing about surveying. He got a book, and I cite the book, and you can look at the book online, and I challenge anyone in my book to go into that book and do any of the algebra equations in that book. Abe Lincoln in six weeks taught himself to be a surveyor with no tutor and no teacher and did such a good job of it that you can still walk the fields he surveyed in Springfield. And according to professional surveyors,

he did an amazing job, particularly in light of the fact that he didn't really have great equipment. So Abe Lincoln improvement, America, we got to get back to that. The N is navigate. And if you asked Abe Lincoln what he was most proud of

before he became president, he would have told you he was most proud of before he became president, he would have told you he was most proud of the fact that he had been a riverboat pilot who, without any training, built a riverboat, loaded it up with a bunch of farm animals, and took that boat 1,000 miles to New Orleans where he sold the livestock. Without maps, just by learning how to navigate the river through common sense and wisdom and talking to people and so rivers made abe lincoln rivers are a great metaphor for life's journey one of the things that i talk about in the book that lincoln understood was the sacred power of skills. Learning how to

do something, learning how to improve yourself gives you a great sense of self-worth, but also teaches you you can do anything. Lincoln was made by rivers and by navigation. And if you can't navigate, you can't go from here to there in a reasonable way, you're never going to go anywhere. It drives me crazy that we all rely now on GPS and Waze and technology and nobody can read a map. And it seems like a small thing, but it isn't. And it comes to a second part of the American character that used to matter, but doesn't seem to matter as much anymore, which is self-reliance. Yeah.

Right. Emerson's great essay on Americans were supposed to be people who could learn to do something and they could do it themselves. Now that kind of self-reliance, if I use the term self-reliance and learning how to do things, you immediately think about what preppers for the apocalypse or survivalists. That's a problem. So I want to get back to the old notion of self-reliance.

So that's the end. The C is for collaboration. Abe Lincoln and the great late Senator John McCain understood that you can never do anything legendary yourself, but you can with other people. And this has been a hard lesson for me to learn because I agree with Dorothy Parker that hell is other people. Lincoln was not a born collaborator. He could be a loner. He enjoyed his own company, but he learned to do it. And he learned to collaborate with the most horrible people imaginable.

His law partner for 14 years, Billy Herndon, who did everything for Lincoln, was a flat-out alcoholic with all of an alcoholic's character defense. Mary Todd, I think they had a good marriage. But I also think nobody knows what happens in a marriage. But he was able to collaborate with Mary Todd Lincoln and gave her credit for his election as president. Wow. So collaboration, how you do it. One way you have to do it is by not making yourself the star of every single thing. And I talk about how to be a great collaborator, which brings us to O, which you'll like because you're like me, you're a gadfly, gadabout type guy. O is for objection. What made Lincoln great was the fact

that even though he was conflict adverse, his morals and his principles, based on fact, convinced him that something was wrong, he objected. And he objected to the point where it cost him politically and ultimately cost him his life. He was a one-term Whig congressman. He was one of the few people to oppose our invasion of Mexico for the Mexican-American War, knowing it was going to cost him his seat. And it did. And he never, ever regretted it.

So I talk about the fact that we live in a time where people are angry as hell, but not angry enough to actually object in an effective principled manner. We're great yellers. We're like junkyard dogs. We'll bark at anything, and we'll snarl at anything,

and we'll bite anybody that's vulnerable. What Lincoln did was make himself the master of the facts of every situation. When he had to make a decision, if the decision involved violating what he knew to be right he didn't do it and the power and the courage it takes to object has been lost in our country definitely and so that's that's the l the l is for love love, which sounds goofy, but here's my theory on this. Abe Lincoln's bodyguard said it was frustrating to try to describe Lincoln to other people. He saw him every day for years, and he could never quite get the words to describe what Lincoln, what made him so great. And the bodyguard said, Tad Lincoln,

who if he were alive today would have been diagnosed as, as on the autism scale and with learning disability. Back then he was just considered badly behaved. Wow. Tad Lincoln would break into cabinet meetings. And, you know, this is a time when spare the rod, spoil the child was the view.

This was, you know this is a time when spare the rod spoil the child was the view this was people criticized lincoln for being too loving to his sons and when tad would interrupt the meeting lincoln would get down on his knees and listen and take as however long it took for tad to get out what he had to say and lincoln's bodyguard said that was lincoln All the things he saw, he said, it showed the great heart of the man. And it showed the fact that Lincoln loved and could be loved. Now, in all the Lincoln books I read, they talk about the relationship that he had with various women that he got engaged with and his reactions to when they ended the relationship. And they talk about how horrible Mary Todd was. My theory is they loved each other and they were both weird people. And it's kind of a miracle they found each other.

And from the outside, it looked tumultuous. It did hit him a lot. And yet everything they ever wrote and everything they ever did speaks of love. And on the last day of his life, they took a carriage ride where they talked about what they would do when they retired and how they would travel the world together. together and so i seriously think that that um what's missing in our country is love for fellow americans there you go and that seems like an obvious point but i don't know i seem to i seem to uh yearn for it i don't see it there was a time when we loved one another because we were americans yeah i mean you saw like 9-11 how we came together as americans so it's happening it's gotta happen again and then

uh the last step is is uh i think portrayed beautifully in steven spielberg's movie lincoln and the step is now we have to do it now. We can't wait any longer for someone else to get elected. We can't wait any longer for, God forbid, some tragedy to bring us together. Each one of us as American citizens have an obligation to be Lincoln.

There you go. And if we don't do it, we have no one to blame but ourselves if things don't get better. And it's all the more reason to get everyone to buy the book so we can get everybody on board. Well, listen, I've got kids in school. This shirt was on

sale, but it's not free. Order, folks. He's got kids in college, man. I'm still paying off the stovetop hat. There you go. Well, I like the love part and theovetop hat. There you go. Well, I like the love part and the Americans coming together part. One thing I found is I'm at the middle. I'm a moderate Democrat, so I'm kind of in the middle.

And I've learned to look at both sides and understand what they want. Maybe what they're trying to do is not the right way to do it, but that's why we debate as Americans. We, we, we argue the points and respectfully, hopefully, and lovingly, hopefully, but I've started whenever I get into some sort of political engagement, which I try and avoid as much as possible, but you know, maybe there's something that, you know, with someone who has a kind of a more open mind, I'll lay a foundation. I'll say, look, we can talk about, you know, the democratic party, the Republican party and whatever, if you want, but here's the foundation we're running on.

You and I are both Americans. That's the constitution. This is the baseline and everything else is built upon that. So we, we need to operate from the fact that the one thing that matters more than anything else is that we're Americans and that there's a constitution that keeps us together. And all this other BS that's piled on top of it, we can talk about it, but we always need to recognize that we are both

American. Because so many people, they get in this thing like, I'm a Democrat, you're a Republican. And then, you know, it's battle on, you know, and like you say, you know, we need to remember that we're all Americans. We're technically on the same team. Really? It's a wonder to me that I never thought in my lifetime we would lose that thread. Yeah. And so we just have to get it back.

You know, Lincoln is a great model for it because Lincoln always ignored insults. And there's so many examples of it. My favorite one is his Secretary of War, Seward, was quoted in a newspaper as calling Lincoln a baboon. Lincoln said, I'm not insulted that he called me a baboon. What worries me is he said it and he's usually right. That's a great talent to have to be able to spin an insult and act like that. Well, but it's a learned behavior. It's not something that Lincoln necessarily did his whole life. I talk about when

he could be very insulting and very sarcastic and very, I dare say, Trumpian. Because he was always improving, he got better. It's like a comic who relies on blue language and obscenity

to get a shot. The great ones never have to do that um and and so i guess one i like what you're saying about the foundation of we're americans we have a constitution i love that i'll tell you that the the thing that lincoln used to do which i think is also useful whether he was in trial and in court or dealing with Congress or dealing with the South to the degree he could, Lincoln always conceded every point that he could. He always focused on what the primary issue was that he could not compromise on. And then for the most part, gave everything else up. You know, that's a really great analogy too, because I mean,

here we demand everything. We won't give up a line item sent for, you know, it's gotta be our way or the highway, the way both sides bark at each other. And think about it. We just avoided the 22nd government shutdown in American history. The first one was in 1976. Abe Lincoln kept the federal government open every day of his administration, 24 hours a day.

The offices opened up Monday at 9 a.m. and closed at 3 p.m. every single day like they had before the war and as they continue to do after the war. How did he do it? Well, one way he did it was he sent a special message to Congress on July 4th, 1864 saying in essence, the citizens have the right to the continuity of government. And those in government have no right to break that continuity well you know what you can give a lot in these government shutdown talks but you can't give that yeah and so you know here we're

just talking and just two two amish fellas you know the fat, but we've already come up with three pretty solid ways to handle those people in all our lives who don't think we're wrong. Don't just think we're wrong, but in being wrong, think we're evil. There you go. You know, I, I love the idea that you say where, uh, he was willing to concede stuff and but he still had that one principle like you talked about that he was willing to object to right in the owen lincoln um and i i like that idea you know i've i've sat down as a moderate and and you know i've gone the gambit and i was a up until george bush uh w in the uh, the, uh, who is this in the Cheney presidency? Um, I've, you know, I was supporting the Republicans. I was a Republican up until that, that, uh, the, the, uh, the Cheney administration.

Um, the, uh, yeah, you remember he was really running the country. Um, the, uh, and then And then I said enough of this. His WZ to C was beyond me. I was embarrassed, which is funny because I can't imagine being a Republican now. And then I went to being a Democrat and a liberal and the extreme sort of left, if you will. And now I find myself at the moderation middle. And I can look at both parties, even the extremes, and go, okay, what are they trying to achieve? Okay, Republicans really love family.

They're into family, and they see some of the things that the left are supporting as tearing apart the family. Okay, so they want that. Now, maybe some of the things they're trying to do to achieve or ensure families maybe aren't the best healthy thing for everybody. So how can we somehow give them what they want and need and create that balance? I think there needs to be more of that. You know that. I couldn't agree more. And which reminds me of the fourth thing that made Lincoln so great and so useful for our time.

Even for a lawyer and even for a guy who loved surveying and carried with him for the rest of his life Euclid's geometric proofs because he found them comforting, Lincoln was obsessed with facts. He was renowned for taking a lot of time to question a lot of people before he made a decision. Drove his cabinet crazy. And they mistook his desire to get the facts for a kind of a mental deficiency. But the lawyers who used to travel the circuit with him said, Lincoln had an unbelievable talent for keeping emotion out of it. And to take nothing on faith,

but to on his own, go out and walk the scene of the crime or look at the evidence himself or whatever it was, because he believed facts were better than truth. And here's why we live in an age where people say to me without irony, well, that's my truth. And here's why. We live in an age where people say to me, without irony, well, that's my truth. That's your truth. There's a term for that, which was insane.

What do you mean, your truth, right? That's what I tell my psychiatrists every day. But the point is, and I say in the book, truth has a great reputation, but it doesn't deserve. The problem with truth is you can't prove a truth. The deepest truths that each of us have are faith-based, which is why our founding fathers knew truth is a wonderful thing. Faith is a wonderful thing. Faith is a wonderful thing. You can't be Lincoln without faith.

And I talk about that. I'm a person of faith, but you know what our founding fathers knew? Faith has no place in the public sphere because it's not fact-based. And so, you know, you, you brought up the example of one party seems to be very pro-family and pro-kids, and that's fine.

That's great. We should all be that way. The question is, when we get to the hard fact of a public policy, who's going to pay for it? How are we going to pay for it? How do we know it's going to work? Those are fact-based inquiries. You're not entitled to use your truth against my truth in that argument and if you do you know we're playing baseball and you brought

a hockey stick that's a good analogy yeah you know my psychiatrist says that to me he'll be like you know chris you have eight personalities and i'll be like well that's my truth and he's like yeah but you need to get fixed and i'll be like yeah that's your your truth buddy so yeah the thing is we in my first book you mentioned uh lawyers liars and storytelling i i talk about the fact that you know the power of narrative the power of narrative, the power of story. And every great story has three legs, ethos, pathos, and logos, which is every great story has a great storyteller who you have faith in. It has a logic that's inherent to it.

In some way, it touches you, pathos. We live in an age where the only thing anybody ever wants to talk about is the pathos. I feel this. I'm angry about that um and it it ignores the credibility and logic that's supposed to be the other two legs of the interaction and lincoln is a great example of a guy who lived by logic, credibility. And so great was his logic, so great was his credibility, that people were moved by it.

I mean, he wrote the greatest speeches, arguably, in the English language. Yeah. In American history. And they're not long. The Emancipation Proclamation isn't long either. And the Gettysburg Address was short, sweet, and not the main star, right? The fellow who spoke spoke for four hours. They had to build a little latrine so he could relieve himself during the speech,

and nobody remembers a single thing he said. The fact the guy was the president of Harvard is just sad. Wow. This is crazy. You know, you bring up some good points, and some of them fall back to what you said earlier, the self-reliance, the intelligence, you know. I meet so many people nowadays that get their political knowledge from memes.

Like, I'll be talking to somebody, and they're like, hey, you know, Biden did this the other day. And I'm like, what? And, you know, it's some meme clip that they've pulled, you know, of something. And I'm like, are you getting all your news from memes? Like, you're just, you're on TikTok and that's how you get your news? Explain this to me. You're a smart guy.

You lived in 2000. Not really. Explain this. We live in a country where everybody presents themselves as kind of cynical and hard-boiled and doesn't trust the man and doesn't trust the powers that be, et cetera, et cetera. And yet they'll see a meme on the same platform that they like to see kittens on. And they're 100% in. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, if it has kittens, it can't be wrong. Well, the kittens then. Yeah. It's a, it's how you always know. What's terrible is I'm, I'm a, I'm a very handsome 60 years old and I'm old enough to remember people from the sixties and seventies saying, you know, basically don't believe anything a corporation says because they're just out for money.

And don't buy shit that people are trying to sell you because they just want money. And if somebody tells you something and they're screaming at you, there's a pretty good chance they're screaming at you because they don't want to be fat. I remember when people used to feel that way. And a commercial break here. Amazon is a great place to buy all your products. at you because they don't have any fat i remember when people used to feel that way yeah yeah uh and

a commercial break here amazon is a great place to buy all your products chris you're a funny guy i'm telling you that's right i try we have good days and bad days podcasts i should i should uh and one of the things else i wanted to note um you know you talk about the intellect and the logic and the self-reliance we've really become this uh society in my opinion this is my truth fit um where we have this victimhood competition society i think everyone seems to be competing to be the biggest victim and everyone knows it's me but everyone wants to steal seem to steal it from me. But you see that on news. You see, you read that on every article leads with, I was a victim of this. I was, you know, it's like, whoopie, what's her name?

Whoopie Goldberg on The View. She had that famous conundrum or not conundrum, but you know, muck up that she had where she was, she was trying, she ended up saying she was trying to do a, a, a competition of victimhood between Jewish people in the Holocaust and black people with races in America and what they experienced for 400 years. And by doing it in the way she played it, she, you know, she tried to be dismissive of, well,

the Jewishust wasn't as bad as what black people went through and then she got a lot of hate for it but it was it was example to me of uh and that's kind of where my light bulb went on i'm like we live in this society where people are just trying to out competition each other for being the biggest victim instead of what you talked about with uh abe lincoln with being self-reliant and using logic. We're really in an emotional thing where everyone's just emotional about everything. Just what I was saying about pathos has sort of become the crack cocaine of storytelling, of narrative, of personal narrative, political narrative.

We're not interested in what the best policy is based on the facts. We're interested in what's the most emotional and most upsetting and the most outrageous, et cetera. There you go. We've got to get better. We've got to improve. We've got to get back to intelligent, rational debates. We all know it. But you know what?

We put ourselves in this position when we killed the public education system in our country, when we stopped teaching civics, when we stopped teaching how democracy works. Alex de Tocqueville came to the United States in the 1850s, a Frenchman, and he came for one reason. He noticed that France and the United States both had a revolution in the late 18th century. France lasted about seven years and then became Napoleon's empire. America continued to be a democracy. de Tocqueville asked why? What's the difference? And it's not because I'm a lawyer. It's just a fact that de Tocqueville said that the only difference is lawyers and the constitution that in america you have a class of people who make the constitution a reality and that in courts regular citizens get to come in and serve as jurors that's it and how fragile a thing is that de toffield said he was worried that popular media newspapers were going to at some point let a demagogue

get people so riled up against democracy and all its sort of complications that the people themselves will vote a demagogue in. Yeah. Committire. And nobody says this is guaranteed. Yeah. Nobody.

You know, it's in talking about this, I feel so strongly about it. I now kind of wish I had written a better book. I think it's great what you did.

You'll be fine. Right? That's what you saved the second book for. You know, you got to fulfill that contract. Well, I think the second great what you did you'll be fine right that's what you saved the second book for you know you gotta fulfill that contract the second book should be expensive and better yeah cause you know we have all the big

book author companies on you know they're gonna be they're gonna be you get this book out tomorrow on the 4th they're gonna be like hey so what do you got next what do you got next but no you bring up a good point. I mean, we are at that conflux right now. We're seeing populism rise everywhere,

especially in Europe. In fact, I think it's Slovakia just installed a populist government. We saw Italy go back to the party of Mussolini. Um, and then of course the Slovakia thing is going to muck up what's going on with Ukraine and the kind of wall of support that we've had. Um, I was disturbingly listening to a Senate, uh, a Senator on face the nation a couple of weeks ago who literally said out of his mouth, he said well you know maybe it is time for populism to come to america a senator not one of those house you know those house kids running around this is the center and i was like are you freaking kidding me and uh but you're right

their democracy is not guaranteed but i think your book comes at a great time where we are at that moment you know we're we're like going from president to president on whether or not this democracy this great experimentation this great experiment is going to go you know i mean we were just for those watching 10 to 15 years mark milley was just calling out uh and and talking about some of the things uh that went on and and i don't think anyone knows how close we came to the precipice than him. When you really look at January 6th and the turning over of the Trump presidency to Biden, there were really five people who stood in the way.

There was Milley. There was, I think, two people at the Justice Department. And then there was Mike Pence. And I think there's probably another one. But really, it came down to five people um and that's pretty scary when you really think about it and and nobody really everyone's like yeah whatever democracy's been here it'll be here next week we'll be fine uh turn on the see what flow's doing on the bachelor or whatever the hell you know it's kind of where we're at but you you

early early in our discussion you brought the great point that so many people are disaffected and angered by politics. They don't care anymore. And that's how the evil take power that good men do nothing. So there you go. Uh, give us any final thoughts or tease outs or pitches. You want to do on the book, uh, to get people order up. Uh, I, uh, we have a podcast that's associated with it called how to be a boy with a great character actor. Greg Grunberg, who's a good friend.

And we have Mayim Bialik is our first guest. And, you know, I hope this book is something that people maybe give to their friends or to their kids or read themselves because it's intended to be funny. It was funny. And a book about Lincoln is not funny is a kind of a lie. It's also meant to be practical, something you can actually do that will make your life better. And I'm really grateful for the chance to talk about it. There you go. And we're glad to have you on as well.

Very honored. You know, and comedy is so great because it's such a great way to deliver truth and help people see the fallacies or the hypocrisies of human nature in our ways. You know, we do that on the show. We think we do it on the show, infotainment. You know, people like Stephen Colbert and his show and other people, they can talk about really hard politics that people just go, oh, man, I want to talk about that today. But being able to spin it in a funny sense makes it so that we look at stuff and we go, oh, yeah, we are kind of being silly human beings about something that we really shouldn't. So it's great for that.

So thank you very much for coming to the show. We really appreciate you coming by. Thank you, Chris. It's a pleasure. Thank you. And thanks, Samanis, for tuning in. Order the book wherever fine books are sold. Stay away from those alleyway bookstores because you might get

tetanus in them. How to Be Abe Lincoln, Seven Steps to Leading a Legendary Life. Go to goodreads.com, 4chesschrisfast, linkedin.com, 4chesschrisfast, youtube.com, 4chesschrisfast, and chrisfast1 on the tickety-tockety for the kids. Thanks for tuning in. Be good.

Be good to each other, and we'll see you next time.